This sermon was preached on Sunday, December 22 at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Wellesley, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Isaiah 7:10-16, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25, and Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18.
Last spring, the Boston Handel and Haydn Society orchestra was just finishing up another spectacular performance of a Mozart piece. As the final notes of the opus faded away, the customary hush fell over the audience, everyone holding their breath. But then “Wow!” – a small child’s awestruck voice broke the silence. The whole auditorium titters, then laughs, then breaks into heartfelt applause. They’re caught up with him, with that small child, in his “Wow!”
After the concert, the president of the orchestra was so charmed by the moment that he tracked down the child to thank and meet him. Turns out he’s a nine-year-old boy on the autism spectrum who is absolutely in love with classical music. His grandfather explained that his grandson’s autism means he often expresses himself differently from what’s expected. The child’s “Wow!” was also a rare and special moment for their family. “I can count on one hand the number of times that he’s spontaneously ever come out with some expression of how he’s feeling,” he told a radio reporter.
This child’s voice was a disruption, interrupting the traditional respectful silence and breaking concert-going decorum. It could have been a moment of embarrassment for the child’s grandfather, or a source of annoyance to the crowd. But instead, this moment of unbridled, genuine joy, it was a gift to everyone in the room.
My father once wrote to my brother-in-law that one of his parenting rules is to never stop your kid from doing something that might embarrass them. In his eyes, children need to learn for themselves how much they care about what other people think and how much they don't. The less you tell your kid to care about what other people think, the less they will. Any time you think of telling them that they might embarrass themselves, he warns, double check that you don't mean you think that they might embarrass you.
So when we read in Matthew’s Gospel that Joseph was unwilling to expose his young, pregnant fiancée to public disgrace, I can’t help but hear this upstanding citizen’s reluctance to expose himself to that same embarrassment. After so many weeks of Advent listening to the ancient hopes for the long-awaited Messiah, it can be easy to forget that Jesus’ conception was unplanned, unexpected—a scandal. No one would have blamed Joseph for quietly releasing Mary from their marital agreement. Indeed, everything Joseph has been taught about decorum, decency, and righteousness led him to resolve to keep the scandal as quiet as possible. Don’t break the silence.
But then God intervenes. God’s angel tells Joseph to let go of his fear. Tells him to allow this child, this extraordinary miracle, to completely upend his life. In naming the child Jesus, Joseph claims Mary’s child as his own, helping to fulfill this child’s destiny as a savior in the Davidic line. Doing so means Joseph takes on more than public ridicule, of course. The arrival of an unplanned child changes everything for their parents, but having this particular child in this particular place? It totally overturns the trajectory of Joseph’s life. In the next chapter of Matthew, Joseph is forced to flee to a foreign country as a refugee, and then to resettle in another district upon his return to Israel. This, of course, is just the beginning. This child, as the angel warns, has come to change the world.
Joseph plays an active role in protecting the baby Jesus, but he is also mainly just getting out of God’s way, allowing Jesus to become who he is meant to become. It all starts from Joseph’s brave choice to let go of his instincts for avoiding scandal and embarrassment. Joseph does his best to love his child as he is and is meant to be—the Son of God, the savior of the world.
We do church best when we love our children as God has created them, interruptions and wiggles and all. Children have other places to learn decorum and decency, sitting still and staying quiet. But here is where we all come to learn how God might be calling us to break the silence, to upend our lives. Who best to teach us this than our children?
Some of our church school committee members and I have been reading and passing around a book called Love First, by director of children’s ministry, Colette Potts. Potts understands children’s ministry not as a ministry for or to children, but as ministry by children to the whole church. She sees children as ministers, ready to teach us about God if they're just given the chance--even in small, minorly disruptive ways. This idea - well, it’s a profoundly Christmas idea. But it’s one I see most every week at St. Andrew’s. When I watched the kids draw pictures and write letters to college kids who don’t have support networks. Or every time I’m stumped by confirmation kids with questions that get at the heart of our faith, or listening to them argue about the meaning of Jesus’ life to their own identity. I heard from a couple parents that when someone talks about something they’re afraid of, their children shout together, “Love is stronger!” just like we did here, at the All Hallow’s Eve service. Church school teachers have come up to me with stories about our elementary kids interrupting the lessons with those BIG questions about God that make you sit back in wonder. Why isn’t the world the way Isaiah promised it could be? When is Jesus going to come? Maybe that Bible verse about Jesus crying, maybe that’s important because it shows he’s human, too.
When we love children as they are and as they are becoming, they’re not ashamed to ask questions they don’t know the answer to, not afraid to guess. Not shy about shouting out their thoughts, at least in my class!
Most ministers I know have at least one favorite story of a child’s blurted exclamation in church: the curious child who peered into the chalice and announced, “That’s not real blood in there!”, the two-year-old who gasped and cried “It broke!” at the fraction of the host. What’s magical, and annoying, about most children is that they have not totally internalized how to be embarrassed quite yet. They often lack the good sense to feel disgraced. But perhaps that’s exactly what gets in the way of us experiencing God’s grace. Perhaps this is what the children can teach us.
God knows kids’ interruptions aren’t always cute, or profound. The things kids say and do make us feel awkward and squirmy or even enraged. But that’s why I love that God chose to come into this world in an unconventional, inconvenient, and disgraceful way. I love that in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was an oddball kid who disrupted adults in worship and caused his parents consternation and anxiety—and he grew into an even odder adult who said uncomfortable things and trod over decorum of all sorts.
Joseph’s strange journey into parenthood reminds us to let go of our fears of embarrassment and to embrace where God, and the children, are leading. Even if their interruptions aren’t always about completely upending our lives--even if it’s just to allow ourselves to gasp, and giggle, and delight.
Here, in the last quiet moment of Advent, we hold our breath, we wait. We listen for that first-breath gasp of a tiny newborn to break the silence and upend the world.
Last spring, the Boston Handel and Haydn Society orchestra was just finishing up another spectacular performance of a Mozart piece. As the final notes of the opus faded away, the customary hush fell over the audience, everyone holding their breath. But then “Wow!” – a small child’s awestruck voice broke the silence. The whole auditorium titters, then laughs, then breaks into heartfelt applause. They’re caught up with him, with that small child, in his “Wow!”
After the concert, the president of the orchestra was so charmed by the moment that he tracked down the child to thank and meet him. Turns out he’s a nine-year-old boy on the autism spectrum who is absolutely in love with classical music. His grandfather explained that his grandson’s autism means he often expresses himself differently from what’s expected. The child’s “Wow!” was also a rare and special moment for their family. “I can count on one hand the number of times that he’s spontaneously ever come out with some expression of how he’s feeling,” he told a radio reporter.
This child’s voice was a disruption, interrupting the traditional respectful silence and breaking concert-going decorum. It could have been a moment of embarrassment for the child’s grandfather, or a source of annoyance to the crowd. But instead, this moment of unbridled, genuine joy, it was a gift to everyone in the room.
My father once wrote to my brother-in-law that one of his parenting rules is to never stop your kid from doing something that might embarrass them. In his eyes, children need to learn for themselves how much they care about what other people think and how much they don't. The less you tell your kid to care about what other people think, the less they will. Any time you think of telling them that they might embarrass themselves, he warns, double check that you don't mean you think that they might embarrass you.
So when we read in Matthew’s Gospel that Joseph was unwilling to expose his young, pregnant fiancée to public disgrace, I can’t help but hear this upstanding citizen’s reluctance to expose himself to that same embarrassment. After so many weeks of Advent listening to the ancient hopes for the long-awaited Messiah, it can be easy to forget that Jesus’ conception was unplanned, unexpected—a scandal. No one would have blamed Joseph for quietly releasing Mary from their marital agreement. Indeed, everything Joseph has been taught about decorum, decency, and righteousness led him to resolve to keep the scandal as quiet as possible. Don’t break the silence.
But then God intervenes. God’s angel tells Joseph to let go of his fear. Tells him to allow this child, this extraordinary miracle, to completely upend his life. In naming the child Jesus, Joseph claims Mary’s child as his own, helping to fulfill this child’s destiny as a savior in the Davidic line. Doing so means Joseph takes on more than public ridicule, of course. The arrival of an unplanned child changes everything for their parents, but having this particular child in this particular place? It totally overturns the trajectory of Joseph’s life. In the next chapter of Matthew, Joseph is forced to flee to a foreign country as a refugee, and then to resettle in another district upon his return to Israel. This, of course, is just the beginning. This child, as the angel warns, has come to change the world.
Joseph plays an active role in protecting the baby Jesus, but he is also mainly just getting out of God’s way, allowing Jesus to become who he is meant to become. It all starts from Joseph’s brave choice to let go of his instincts for avoiding scandal and embarrassment. Joseph does his best to love his child as he is and is meant to be—the Son of God, the savior of the world.
We do church best when we love our children as God has created them, interruptions and wiggles and all. Children have other places to learn decorum and decency, sitting still and staying quiet. But here is where we all come to learn how God might be calling us to break the silence, to upend our lives. Who best to teach us this than our children?
Some of our church school committee members and I have been reading and passing around a book called Love First, by director of children’s ministry, Colette Potts. Potts understands children’s ministry not as a ministry for or to children, but as ministry by children to the whole church. She sees children as ministers, ready to teach us about God if they're just given the chance--even in small, minorly disruptive ways. This idea - well, it’s a profoundly Christmas idea. But it’s one I see most every week at St. Andrew’s. When I watched the kids draw pictures and write letters to college kids who don’t have support networks. Or every time I’m stumped by confirmation kids with questions that get at the heart of our faith, or listening to them argue about the meaning of Jesus’ life to their own identity. I heard from a couple parents that when someone talks about something they’re afraid of, their children shout together, “Love is stronger!” just like we did here, at the All Hallow’s Eve service. Church school teachers have come up to me with stories about our elementary kids interrupting the lessons with those BIG questions about God that make you sit back in wonder. Why isn’t the world the way Isaiah promised it could be? When is Jesus going to come? Maybe that Bible verse about Jesus crying, maybe that’s important because it shows he’s human, too.
When we love children as they are and as they are becoming, they’re not ashamed to ask questions they don’t know the answer to, not afraid to guess. Not shy about shouting out their thoughts, at least in my class!
Most ministers I know have at least one favorite story of a child’s blurted exclamation in church: the curious child who peered into the chalice and announced, “That’s not real blood in there!”, the two-year-old who gasped and cried “It broke!” at the fraction of the host. What’s magical, and annoying, about most children is that they have not totally internalized how to be embarrassed quite yet. They often lack the good sense to feel disgraced. But perhaps that’s exactly what gets in the way of us experiencing God’s grace. Perhaps this is what the children can teach us.
God knows kids’ interruptions aren’t always cute, or profound. The things kids say and do make us feel awkward and squirmy or even enraged. But that’s why I love that God chose to come into this world in an unconventional, inconvenient, and disgraceful way. I love that in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was an oddball kid who disrupted adults in worship and caused his parents consternation and anxiety—and he grew into an even odder adult who said uncomfortable things and trod over decorum of all sorts.
Joseph’s strange journey into parenthood reminds us to let go of our fears of embarrassment and to embrace where God, and the children, are leading. Even if their interruptions aren’t always about completely upending our lives--even if it’s just to allow ourselves to gasp, and giggle, and delight.
Here, in the last quiet moment of Advent, we hold our breath, we wait. We listen for that first-breath gasp of a tiny newborn to break the silence and upend the world.
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